Rating: 
Summary: Interesting topics and people, but no follow through...
Review: This books starts off great as we learn about an intense chaos theory and neural net-based prediction / pattern recognition and forecasting model that has beaten the stock market for a million. Wow, that's cool, let's learn more about it...The book is filled more with details about the Santa Fe landscape at dusk, and what each character did when they were boy geniuses at age 5 than what was most interesting; the models and their learning mechanism. The book does introduce us to some interesting characters that you might hear about in today's tech world, but the lack of focus on either the characters or the model was a bit annoying. There is also no real data about the P/L, ROI, or other tangible results as to whether this or one of the many other systems built by earlier pioneers actually made any real profit.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly Entertaining
Review: This fun book reminded me of The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test because I was always learning something funky and new that was way way out there and possibly very dangerous. Doynes as Ken Kesey? Heck yeah! It was also intriguing to me because it showed you how far serious money men and women will go to find the Holy Grail of investing. However, the book's major failing is that it doesn't get into how they made such wonderful gains when everyone around else on Wall Street lost money (i.e. Long Term Capital) big time in the fall of 1998. I thoroughly enjoyed and highly recommend to all. Just don't expect to become a better investor as a result of reading this. Buy a Jesse Livermore book (or mine) for that!
Rating:
Summary: You would learn a thing or two,
Review: Well I picked up the book as I am interested in complexity science. Most of the reviews here are quite harsh, and probably it was bad expectations management on writer's / publisher's part.Even though the book sometimes is promoted as an investing book, it is not. It is not meant for day traders who just expect to discover next holy grail of financial markets reading such books. There is no holy grail in markets, but thats another thing. With that said, it may be clear that it is not a TRADING / INVESTIING book. The book is story of two renowned physicists turning to use their physics, specifically chaos theory, to model financial market. The story part is dealt with great care. I am sure you learn a thing or two reading this book. This book was quite reasy to read and time I spent reading was worth more than had I spent reading a Grisham novel or watching some stupid soap on TV. It is real life here folks. Bass is not a novelist so I did not expect him write a literary piece here. He has written a true story in a very good way and struggle of Farmer and Packard in estabilshing a company and utilizing their knowldge in a productive way is very cleverly depicted. There are tonnes of other relevant information that come and go, and an intelligent reader would surely pick something here. There is a lot of current history explored here. With that said, this is NOT a book for the NEXT TRADING SYSTEM, nor does it preach that their system was PERFECT.
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